


District

by Kireon



Series: District [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Add all the -ists and phobics and isms in there might as well these are not nice people, Anything you find in a zombie flick/material? you get here, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gratuitous and Extreme Violence and/or Prejudice towards Zombies, I warn for literally everything, M/M, Multi, Problematic Language and Themes, Setting Zombies on Fire, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Slaying 2k???, Zombies, problematic characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:05:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13020945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kireon/pseuds/Kireon
Summary: Quarantined zones, nicknamed 'Districts', in the city of Portland, Oregon, had been the government's way of trying to contain the outbreak. Rigorous testing separated the infected from the non-infected, and the former were locked away behind great concrete walls. Left to, hopefully, die out and rot away while the non-infected remained unaffected.  Emmett, a survivor after the Districts failed to fully contain the outbreak, makes a decision that will not only change his life forever, but also that of those he finds not only surviving, but thriving behind the great concrete walls.





	1. Chapter 1

_**Prologue** _

 

It was seven forty-eight in the morning, and Anise had no idea where her mother, father, or little sister were.

Ranger was still there with her, of course, and he was the eternal guardian at her side, her very best friend ever. Like a silent shadow, he stuck close to her side, practically joined at the hip with her as she ruffled his thick fur, focusing on the wiry texture on top, the coarser fur underneath, and the really soft and silky stuff under that. Black ears were angled, stuck in what the nice people had called the “listening” pose. “Where's Mommy?” She asked him. “Find Mommy.” He walked forward, leading her to where the last known location of her mother had been.

Nobody home, and even Mommy's car was gone.

Her lower lip trembled, quivering as tears welled up in her eyes. It wasn't _fair_ , why was everything going all _wrong_? First she hadn't gotten up on time and missed her favorite cartoon, her cereal wasn't there waiting for her with her three-quarters full orange juice in her special glass, and no one had even come to kiss her good morning either like they _always_ did.

Worst day ever.

A long, dark muzzle slipped beneath her hand, nudging firmly as one heavy paw reached up and planted itself against her leg, careful not to scratch with the thick black nails at the tip of each paw. His eyes, orangey like Halloween pumpkins, stared up at her as she sniffled. “You're right, maybe something happened to Amy and they had to take her to the doctor. I _hate_ the doctors.” That had to be it, they wouldn't just all disappear, and Amy was always getting sick and being stupid and whiny and crying all the time.

But, what should she do now?

“ Maybe I'll make breakfast like a big girl, what do you think?” She asked the dog, who whined and wagged his tail very slightly. “Yeah, me too. Mommy'll be so proud of me for being a big girl, maybe I'll even get to stay home by myself like Cassie did that one time.” 

Ranger accompanied her into the kitchen, sending the front door an inscrutable look as his nails clicked against the linoleum. She rummaged through the drawers, pulling out half a loaf of bread and opened it up to remove two pieces.

“ I don't like toast,” she told Ranger. “but if Mommy sees I'm eating everything like a good girl, she'll know I'm grown up now.” She put two slices into the toaster and pushed down, watching in fascination as the darkness inside turned a bright red-orange in color.

“I wonder why it turns that color but there's no fire? It's hot like fire, and it burns things too, but it's not fire at all.” Her mind thought on it, and she shrugged as a result. “It must be magic, Ranger, maybe someday we'll be able to do magic too.”

Ranger flicked his ears back and raised them again in response, watching her open up the fridge to get eggs and bacon. “Eggs are icky and slimy too, and bacon takes forever.” But it was all part of a balanced breakfast, just like the tv always told her. All the kids on tv ate eggs, bacon, cereal and toast with milk and orange juice.

Which sounded really, really yucky and gross when she thought about it. Who drank milk _and_ orange juice together? That just didn't make any sense. Milk belonged on cereal or with strawberry flavors, that was _it_.

“ Wanna piece, boy? I won't tell Mommy if you don't.” She asked, offering a strip of bacon from the package, shuddering at the touch of raw meat. So gross and greasy, she'd have to wash her hands like a zillion times before she'd feel clean again.

Never one to say no to an offered treat, Ranger sat down and lifted one paw in expectation for a shake. That was always the trick he had to do before _any_ treat could be given. As expected, his paw was grasped, held and shaken vigorously before she tossed the meat to him. A flash of very sharp, very big white teeth and pink-red flesh and the treat vanished in a single snap.

“Uh oh, I can't use the stove.” Anise paused, looking at the bacon, and then at the stove. Mommy had been _very_ clear; no oven, no stove. Not now, not _ever_ and _especially_ not when she was all by herself with Ranger. She might accidentally cause a fire.

Ranger gave a short _woof_ in response, as if confirming her thoughts that the stove was completely off limits.

She frowned, the non-sticky greasy hand reaching up to scratch vigorously at her curly brown hair. Her face lit up a second later. She might not be able to use the stove, but people made breakfast in the microwave. And if you could warm things up in there, it'd probably make the bacon cook too, and maybe even the eggs! She hummed the theme song to her favorite show, dancing around the kitchen as she picked each individual piece away from the rest and set it on one of the plates, she hummed, making criss-cross designs until all the bacon was loaded up on the plate and opened the microwave. “How long do you do this for? Maybe five minutes?” She frowned, pushing the instant timer five times and listened to it kick into life with a loud, droning hum.

Five minutes sounded good, she could get the eggs and toast ready too.

“Peanut butter is good for you, even if it does stick in your mouth.” She told her dog, very matter of fact in tone, and got the container down from the cupboard all by herself. She was getting taller and didn't need to open a drawer to use as a stepping stool anymore. Totally grown up thing to do, not using stepping stools. A butter knife was taken from the drawer, because butters knives were for butter and _peanut_ butter had butter in it, so it had to be used for that too. She spread it thickly, clumsily onto the two pieces of bread, taking two more pieces out to toast and set the finished ones on another plate.

This was harder than Mommy made it seem, that was for sure.

“ What next, oh! Eggs, gotta do eggs. I hate them, but Mommy says they're good for you. I'll make you some too, okay, Ranger? She told me it makes your coat all nice and shiny and soft.”

Ranger licked his chops in response, watching her move about the kitchen. A glass bowl was taken out from another section of the kitchen, and the corner of Anise's tongue poked out the side of her mouth in concentration as she focused intently on cracking the eggs _just_ the right way. The first two eggs didn't crack right, and she muttered something about being too stupid for cracking eggs.

She had to reach into the oily gooey mess and pick out the shells with a squeal of, “Ewwww,  _ gross _ !” and multiple giggles. Her attention was drawn away when she accidentally broke one of the yolks, watching in fascination as the yellow mess spread out like a cloudy stain and moved around whenever she poked her finger in it.

It was so squishy and oily and  _ yuck _ , but it was cool too. She took a piece of eggshell and poked the rounded dome of the unpopped yolk, squealing in delight as it too, spread like a yellow cloud among the paler, oilier sections. “I gotta make more, Mommy and Amy and Daddy'll be hungry after they get home.”

It was an excuse to crack more eggs and pop the yolks, of course, but Ranger wouldn't tell on her, and she wouldn't tell either. It would be another secret just between the two of them.

The microwave timer shrieking shrilly to let her know that her bacon was done cooking threw her abruptly out of a world she'd been creating where there was an evil yellow cloud trying to take over the light yellowish land of oily stuff and they were trying to fight back, but it wasn't working. An egg hit the floor with a _crack_ and _splat_ , Ranger instantly helping himself to the mess as she looked around, confused, and at a loss for what she'd been doing before she'd gotten caught up in her own little world.

“ Mommy?” She called out, uncertain.

The microwave beeped at her again, and she cringed at the sound, wandering over with sticky, oily fingers to open the door and make the noise stop. Steam burst out, nearly hitting her full in the face with a baked meat smell that made her gag. Her heart pounded and something dripped out of the microwave with a smell that made Ranger look up, tail wagging as he finished licking the remnants of the egg off the floor.

“ Uh oh, I think I did it wrong.” She told him, frowning, and inched closer to see what had happened.

Grease covered the whole inside, and leaked off the round glass plate and pooled everywhere, dripping out of the microwave itself onto the granite countertops with its pretty silver flecks in the black shiny surface. “I _think_ it's done, it looks like it.”

It was steaming though, so that meant it was way, _way_ too hot to touch and she would have to leave it alone.

...but how was she gonna get the eggs in then?

“Mommy makes this look really, _really_ easy, you know.” She told Ranger, the dog's shoulder coming up to her hip as she wandered away to the sink and washed her hands. “How come it's so hard? It didn't _look_ so hard when she did it, and you know we always watched her all the time.”

He cocked his head to one side and, as always, said nothing. Brown-orange eyes blinking at her expectantly, hoping for more bacon without doing the Bad Thing that was begging.

“ I'll make more toast until it's okay for me to pick up.” Anise decided, trying to find something to do while the bacon plate cooled down. Toast was easier, and she could spread peanut butter on there too. Several minutes later, when all the toast had been properly smeared with gooey globs of peanut butter, stacked on their very own plate, and set out on the kitchen table, Anise returned to the scene of the “crime” that was the microwave. She poked the plate with one cautious finger, letting it linger just enough against the greasy surface to give her an idea of heat.

While it was still pretty warm, it wasn't gonna burn her like it would have before, she decided. Carefully, she picked up the plate and carried the heavy, greasy burden to the table with slow, careful steps. Her favorite shoes crunched eggshell beneath them, she'd have to clean that up before Mommy got home and got mad at her for making a mess again

“There,” She grabbed a piece, bringing three stuck together and tossed it to her dog. “try some of that, Ranger.”

Again, his jaws parted to reveal impressive teeth and _snap snap snap_ and a _gulp_ and a lick of tongue against his lips and the bacon was gone. 

“Was it good?”

She took the tail wagging happily as a definite yes, and beamed, proud of herself.

The eggs went in for five minutes too, and they made weird popping noises too, like mini explosions that popcorn made. She busied herself in the meantime pouring everyone a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. 

She made a face as she used her special cups at the same time. This was _so_ not okay, and the things she had to do to make Mommy see she was all grown up were _really_ hard. 

_Maybe I'll get a treat after all of this, she'll be so impressed she'll get me the Tinkerbell movie like I asked two days ago_. The idea of being rewarded with her favorite movies cheered her immensely, almost enough to make her forget that she'd be drinking milk _and_ orange juice at the same meal.

Almost, but not quite.

Ranger, at ease as he had been, suddenly moved to his feet, body going into an alert stance as a low rumble built in his deep chest. His hackles rose, teeth baring as he glared at the back door. 

Anise blinked, halfway through washing her hands for the sixth time, and paused. The dreamy smile fading as what her Mommy and the nice people had told her about Ranger slowly drifted back in. “What's the matter, boy? Why're you being mean? Is there a bad person?”

She jumped as the microwave shrieked again. “I _hate_ you,” she told it with a hiss, smacking the button to make the door jump open and swing back shut again. She grumbled, sulking as she went to peek out the window, Ranger automatically putting himself in between her and the door itself. 

She didn't _see_ anything weird.

Oh wait, there was Mister Fieldman.

But why was he in their yard?

“ That's just Mister Fieldman, Ranger,” she told her dog with a frown. “he always gives us treats and pulls quarters out of my ear. I don't know  _ how _ , but there's always a quarter there and I never find 'em no matter how good I wash behind my ears.”

Ranger continued to growl, and Anise opened the door to poke her head out. “Mister Fieldman, are you lost again? Mommy's not home right now, so maybe you should go home too?”

The dog made a sound more like a roar than a bark, bodily throwing himself against the door to slam it shut as her neighbor turned around at the sound of her voice and the door slamming.

Anise's jaw dropped, eyes wide at the red that covered him from the nose down, and backed hurriedly away.  She looked frantically at the calendar. It wasn't Halloween yet, and it was past April Fool's day too, so then why was Mister Fieldman wearing a very scary costume?

Why was it missing a lot of things on the face and all red and icky and gross and was that a _ bone _ jutting...

She whimpered and backed further away from the window as the man shambled in a jerky, unstable manner towards them. 

“No,” she told the figure from inside the house. 

“No, no, no, no,  _ no _ ! Go  _ away _ ! GO AWAY!” She screamed turning around and running as the man slammed himself against the door, rattling the hinges and glass and leaving red smears across the glass, glazed, cataract covered milky-blue eyes rolling this way and that.

A bad dream. This was all just a bad, bad,  _ bad _ dream and any minute now Mommy would come in and wake her up.

Ranger had her hand in his mouth, a firm but non-piercing grip as he led her to the front of the house, away from the frightening figure at her back door. She saw the phone, remembering her mother's words about emergencies only and grabbed it. Her shaking fingers, wrinkled from all the hand-washing, slapped at the numbers until she got the three she wanted and pressed  _ send _ , holding it up to her ear as she dropped to a crouch, hiding behind the oversized leather couch in hopes the banging at her back door would stop.

Monsters disappeared when they couldn’t find you anymore, right?

“ _ 911, what's your emergency?” _

She burst into tears. Sobbed hysterically at the broken words but calm words coming across. Familiar, safe.  _ Normal _ . “There's a scary man trying to get me, and I don't know where Mommy is. I need help, can you come get me?” She begged the woman on the other end

“ _ Hello? You said there was-” _

There was a click, two clicks actually, and then she heard screaming on the phone. She pulled it away from her ear, staring at it wide eyed, tears and snot dribbling down her face. Her own trouble forgotten as the sounds of screaming of many people on the other end came through.

“H-Hello? M-Miss 911? Can you hear me? Miss 911?  _ Hello?? _ ”

Ranger made that same furious  _ roar _ , placing himself in front of Anise's hiding spot, hackles raise, ruff out and sharp white teeth exposed and ready to shred if the threat came any closer. His bark was like thunder to her ears, loud, constant and jarring as she heard the sound of something breaking, shattering glass crunching underfoot as something hit the ground and kept coming for them. 

She heard a moan, thick and gurgling in nature, as something dragged itself closer and closer.

Anise's hands slammed over her ears and closed her eyes tight, feverishly whispering the magic words that would make her wake up from the worst dream ever. The phone with its screaming abruptly fading to a steady, droning  _beep, beep, beep_ of a busy signal long forgotten between the glass breaking, the moan, and the sound of her dog readying for full attack mode.

It was just a dream. It was just a dream.

_ It was just a dream…! _


	2. The Lonely Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which our unfortunate protagonist realizes life in the zombie apocalypse really does suck and that things can always get worse.

Ragged sneakers slapped against the broken pavement. His breath came in ragged, choking gasps as he raced across the open stretch of road. Desolate, empty, and utterly lacking in anything other than tall, silent buildings with boarded up or smashed in windows, broken glass, and hollow, bloodstained brick, concrete and fiberglass. He hadn’t even seen so much as a car to crawl under or hide behind in the last hundred to three hundred yards.

Then again, the idea of going through another horrific experience the way making his way through I-5 had been was something he’d rather not take a chance on or repeat.

A gurgling moan, soft and multiplied five fold from the miniature horde growing closer to him, threw his attention back to the present. A stitch caught him in the side; hot and sharp and vicious. Swearing viciously with breath he really couldn’t afford to waste, Emmett pushed himself onward still. One hand, bloodied and heavily bandaged, throbbed as he pressed it against the knife-like stab between hip and ribs.

_Can’t slow down; they’re faster than they look. I’m running and they’ve almost caught up with me. How fucking fast can they possibly fucking be? They shamble! They’ve never_ run _before!_ And, really in the interest of fairness, what the horde was doing wasn’t exactly _running_ , per say, it was more of a fast shambling walk, maybe even generous enough to call it a jerky jog. But who the fuck wanted to be fair at a time like this?

Especially when aforementioned horde was fucking fast enough to catch up with him in basically no time flat, apparently.

The bent, twisted wreck of a street sign flashed past in a blur of bloodstained aluminium and green metal. There was an intersection up ahead, he could lose them there, he’d have a chance to get away and get precious seconds to find a good place to hide. Somewhere he could lie low, take a deep breath, and ultimately get some rest before making his next bid for safety deeper within the quarantine zone. Maybe the dead wouldn’t be so thick there, wouldn’t be able to gather in the kind of horrific mass of shambling, moaning, cannibalistic wretches that filled the streets outside the tall, jagged walls that prevented access.

_I never thought that… well,_ no one _thought that these wouldn’t work. They were only supposed to be_ in here _, not everywhere._ What the fuck was even the point of these goddamn quarantine points if the dead just kept spreading outside it?

His foot landed on a piece of ground that gave way as he hit the corner where Oak met Martin Luther King Boulevard, an embarrassing sound he would completely deny sounding like a rabbit’s death scream shrieked forth from his lungs as he went down- and was just as quickly jerked _up_ high into the air. He thrashed, throwing up, crying and screaming, absolutely certain that this was _the end_ for him, knowing he’d be dead before the next ten minutes were up as the smell, the sound of the undead horde behind him caught up. He felt them, felt those dry, bloody fingers catch and scrape against the ragged ends of his black jeans, against the floppy soled sneakers that had faithfully served him the last four days of running, hiding, and more running.

Those fingers pinched, slipping free as they fell into the blackened pit beneath his feet. The rattle of loose jaws, snapping teeth and animalistic moans rose from beneath him, and he stopped, worn out, and looked between the flaking netting he was caught up in to the sights below. And immediately wished that he hadn’t.

What lay beneath him was a writhing mass of grey-white gore stained flesh; shards of protruding, jagged bone and bulging yellow-red eyes. He could barely tell, most of the time, where one ended and another began, which limbs belonged to what zombie, and where all the blood and entrails were actually coming from. Had there been _people_ hiding in that pit, in hopes that they’d be safe underground, and he’d accidentally triggered some sort of cave in?

That miniature horde continued to pour in, until the last of the stragglers fell, nearly filling the pit halfway with its putrid meat and rotted milk stink.

Was this the way he was going to die? Starvation and dehydration suspended above a fate worse than death should this netting give way at any given point?

_I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about what’s worse; death by lack of water and food, or death by fucking zombies._ He scrubbed at his grimy face with his non-bandaged hand. He was angry, helpless, and more terrified than he’d been even when he’d damn near walked into the arms of one of the freaks down there.

“Whatcha doin’?”

Emmett stiffened at the sound of a voice, unfamiliar, the first he’d heard ever since he’d been separated from everyone he’d ever known, or had come to know in the years since the first quarantine zone had gone up.

_Now I know I’m hosed; I’m hearing voices now._

He was hallucinating. He’d finally gone and lost his mind at long last, pressure had gotten to him, and he was imagining the sound of a girl’s voice, someone around his age, just talking to him like nothing in the world was wrong right now _._

“Hey, I’m talkin’ t’you, mister, whatcha doin’ in our net? Did you get stuck?” More than a hint of impatience was in the young woman’s voice, coming from somewhere beneath and off to the left of his position.

He wrenched a shoulder, yelping in pain as he stopped struggling to try and find where she was at. His net swayed precariously in the air, pendulum-like above a pit filled with undeath and hell waiting with eager, drooling maws to devour him, and convert him to their mindless ranks.

Emmett’s eyes closed, stomach roiling in protest and bowels feeling like they were turning to water the longer time passed by. “Nope, havin’ a fucking _ball_ up here, in case you can’t tell.”

“Oh, okay then. I thought you were stuck.”

Great, not only did this invisible voice not get what sarcasm was, but she also didn’t even seem to understand the gravity of the situation they were in. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“You need to get outta here,” he finally replied tightly, through clenched teeth as he rolled himself to the right, net dipping and swaying dangerously beneath his weight in its lazy, spinning manner twenty feet above the pit. “those things down there don’t know you’re here, and you don’t want them to know either. Run while you still can, I’ll keep ‘em distracted.”

A thoughtful pause. “How’re you gonna make ‘em distracted if you’re stuck in the net?”

He opened his eyes, the voice had gotten closer, revealing that it was either an amazing hallucination, or he was really staring at someone _his age_ standing only a handful of steps away from the rim of the circular pit. Through the weave of the net, he could tell she was dressed in dark clothing, had darkish hair, and was fair-ish of skin too.

What he _didn’t_ see was what exactly the figure at her side was. It was short, stood on all fours, and was _probably_ a dog, if not a monstrosity like some of the weird shit he’d seen running the hell away.

He hissed between clenched teeth, a sound that seemed to excite the dead beneath him, their moans rising up like some sort of choir from Hell. “By making this thing swing back and forth, they can smell me, they can’t smell _you_ yet.”

He watched her head move a little, as if she were asking the dog for his opinion. Great. She was nuts. Absolutely fucking _amazing_ , the first person he’d seen in days and she was insane and probably the biggest piece of zombie bait ever. She straightened back up and shrugged at him- actually _shrugged_ like it was no big deal.

“These ones don’t smell, they hear you.” She said it like he should have known that somehow. As if she were some big shot zombie expert.

“Coulda fooled the fuck outta me,” he muttered, not sure if he was more pissed or exasperated that his final hours were being spent pestered by some girl who thought she knew it all. .

“Huh?”

“Nothing, just, get out of here, okay? I don’t want you dead.” And he really didn’t.

He’d seen far too many people die as a result of the zombie bullshit going on, and he didn’t need anymore god awful things giving him nightmares. Why did people have to die so… so _messy_? Couldn’t they just, you know, fall asleep quietly after one scratch or bite or whatever and not come back?

“Oh, okay,” he heard her turn on one heel, sighing with a boneless limpness to his body as he closed his eyes again. At least he could die pretending he’d saved one life, even if she would end up getting herself killed in a matter of minutes anyway. Hours, maybe even _days_ if she were ridiculously lucky. “um, mister?”

Or not.

“What?” He asked flatly. Knowing his luck, it was gonna be some sort of stupid question that he really didn’t want to deal

“Should I tell my friends to go away too?”

His world stopped, and restarted itself a handful of seconds later. She wasn’t alone? She actually _was_ part of a group of survivors and not just some weird stray wandering about like it was a walk in the goddamn park? “F-Friends? What friends? There’s more than just you?”

Confusion in her voice was apparent, like the idea of _not_ having friends and other people around were unusual. “Well, yeah. I have Ranger, Codo, Pogo, Babs, Mama, Doc, an’ CraMo too, they’re all here with me. Well, Doc’s not, he’s busy, but he’s around helping people.” She rattled off a list of odd names, ticking them off individually on her fingers to count.

Seven names were list. Seven names of possible survivors.

He about popped his shoulder out of place turning to face her. “They can get me down?”

If his situation weren’t so dire, he’d have kicked himself for how pathetic he sounded, how _starved_ for a little bit of _non-_ undead company.

She laughed. Actually _laughed_ at him. He hadn’t heard anyone laugh other than himself in forever. And even that had been the sad, pathetic kind of laughter, not the kind she had. Not that wonderful, beautiful sound of someone so amused by what they’d heard they couldn’t help themselves. He could already tell she was gorgeous just from her voice alone. A goddess, she was well and truly a goddess sent to save him from this hell. She’d been sent to give him hope again.

“Even _I_ can do that, silly.” She informed him brightly, sounding all the world like she had the most amazing smile ever.

His heart sank just a little, however, at the self-assured note in her voice. Not that he _wanted_ to doubt this savior sent from above, but he still wasn’t exactly the smallest guy ever, and she probably didn’t end up weighing more than a hundred pounds soaking wet by the sound of her.

“Uhh, you sure? Maybe your friends should come do it instead.” Preferably someone who was probably six and a half feet tall or more, had three hundred pounds of muscle on them, and could bench a dump truck without effort. Oh, who the hell was he kidding, he might as well ask for the goddamn Hulk to come save him.

“Nah, I’ll do it.” She said cheerfully. “Besides, we need to get you outta here before one of _them_ decides to show up and make it really scary and hard to save you.”

Wait, what?

“‘Them’?”

Why did he have to ask? He shouldn’t be asking that, there was nothing worse than zombies out there. Nothing. He’d _seen_ the shit that went down out there, had seen all the zombies this side of a Romero movie out and about- and he wasn’t just talking about the original version made in the late seventies either. He’d seen one of those fuckers turn around, freaky eyed like in some fucking Evil Dead flick, and do that creepy moan thing before moving towards him in some sort of fucking up shamble-jog-run thing.

She was walking like there _weren’t_ fucking zombies everywhere that may or may not be able to haul themselves out of the pit.

“Swing a little, okay? You gotta get a good swing goin’ or you’re gonna fall in the pit.” Her voice floated up to him, and not for the first time, he kicked himself for clinging to the sound of it. “And yeah, they’re scarier than these guys.”

She peered into the pit, the undead stirring at the scent of new flesh and renewed their frenzied, writhing efforts in attempts to find purchase in the hole. The putrid air wafted up, the girl wrinkling her nose at the smell. “At least those others don’t stink as much.”

“You say that like you _know_ or something.” He groused in response, obliging as he swung himself, rocking back and forth until he really _was_ like some fucking pendulum, or a swing.

“Yup!”

“What do you _mean_ ‘yup’? And you never answered my questi- _holy shit_!” He _really_ didn’t mean for that last part to come out in the girliest scream he’d ever heard in his life.

But, seriously, what the fuck? The last thing he’d expected was to go suddenly catapulting off to one side like some sort of demented slingshot and landed into a clump of thick black trash bags he hadn’t noticed lining the wall and sidewalk on either side of the street. While it wasn’t the _best_ of landings, and his shoulder still smacked against the brick wall of the building, he was _alive_ , out of danger of falling in the pit, and just… remained there.

Holy shit, he was _alive_.

“You scream like a girl, you know that?” Her voice was close, _really_ close. A shadow darkened the light glaring into his closed eyes, and he opened them to peer up at the darkened face of the girl- _definitely_ a girl- peering at him closely.

“Uhh,” he managed, kicking himself for sounding completely and utterly _uncool_ and suave.

A nose in his ear practically made him scream, jerking violently away with a crab-like scuttle.

“Holy fucking, what the hell is, _what the fuck_.” He couldn’t put more than a few words together at the time, not that he could make sense of any, but that was one _big_ fucking dog that’d been sniffing his face and anything with a head full of teeth that could easily rip his arm out of its socket and crack the bone without a second thought was _not_ a dog he wanted near his face, or neck, or _any_ body part for that matter.

Said fucking dog-monster just snorted at him derisively and returned to the girl’s side, sitting as if he’d done absolutely nothing wrong in the first place. 

_J_ _esus,_ _the head’s halfway up her ribs._ Shoulders alone came up to crotch level on her, and that nose would be perfectly well aimed to take a bite out of bits of anatomy he _really_ valued if he were to stand up. Her hand dropped down between a pair of tall, black triangular ears and rubbed, thumb scratching behind one of those large ears with a familiarity that made him almost miss his own dog.

He wondered if Lady’d gotten away, or if his dad’d shot her before they left.

“This is Ranger,” she explained without prompting, more than a touch of pride in her voice. “he’s my best friend, the _best_ dog ever.”

“...that’s a _dog_?” He couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. “Looks like a wolf.”

And he did too. Built for power and endurance with a sloped head, a chunk missing out of one pointed ear, and a muzzle that was a little _too_ long to even call it a German Shepherd. The coloring was more like a dog though, and that tail was a little _too_ curly, he’d have figured it for a Husky mix. Tan, brown, black back and muzzle. The tail was a lighter color, brownish-white with a fluffy, curl that rested against his back.

“He’s that too, Daddy told me he was a mix. Elkhound and Wolf hybrid, means he’s _special_ , and super smart, aren’t you, boy?” She cooed at him in a somewhat disturbing sing-song tone.

The dog, naturally, didn’t respond, though Emmett didn’t think he’d be too surprised if the dog _had_ spoken aloud. Weirder shit would probably happen. But now that he was out of the net, and his vision no longer fucked by the lattice-like holes that couldn’t give him a good view one way or another, he could really take a look at his savior.

He’d been right in that she was gorgeous; her face amazing and constructed in the kind of way that his mother would have called ‘classic’ in terms of features.

She was kinda tall for a girl, and _way_ skinny at that. Dressed weird on top of it; lots of buckles, straps and such over all clinging black clothing. With May weather being so unpredictable, he had _no idea_ how she wasn’t sweltering in the heat. Her face, and whatever other bits of exposed skin were visible, was dirt streaked, and liberally dusted with freckles that didn’t do anything to hide the aqua blue eyes that threw him for a loop with their color and intensity.

She was, in a word, _gorgeous_ , flawless except for that gap, the dirt- and the massive, thick scar arcing into her hairline across her forehead and down her temple.

Whoever’d done that should’ve been fed to the zombies, he thought to himself. Ruined an otherwise angelic face- and _he_ didn’t like that lame, cheesy romantic shit.

She smiled at him, a white smile with a gap between the first two teeth and shook the bird’s nest of curly, light brown hair out of her face. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Another giggle, as if the idea of a cat getting his tongue was highly amusing to her.

How could someone so beautiful be so unaffected, un _moved_ by what was going on around her? Had her friends sheltered her that much? Tricked her somehow so that she didn’t lose her shit the way his mother had after only six months?

How could she remain so… innocent, and pure?

“So, uhh, what’s… with the get up?” He asked, starting to push himself up to his feet- and froze when the dog’s happy demeanor magically changed in an instant. Short, sharp teeth gleamed as the beast lunged forward and snapped an inch away from Emmett’s nose with a low growl.

“ _Jesus_ , what the fuck?!” He threw himself back against the trash bags, watching as the dog’s hackles, raised as they were, slowly lowered. When he tried to get back up again, the ruff raised once again and the ears went back and the growling began anew.

“Ummm,” She began, frowning at the dog as she crouched down beside him, her hand never leaving the place she’d left it resting. “what’s the matter, boy?”

And she acted like the dog was gonna tell her. Great, just fucking great. Maybe she wasn’t as amazing as she looked, maybe there was something irrevocably broken about her that-

“What’d you find, Ani?” A new voice, this one a female as well, came from behind him. A long pause, thoughtful, as he felt eyes boring through his skull as though she could see the disease that separated them from the infected. “...this a survivor, or he infected and that’s why Ranger’s about to rip his face off?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to District! As you've probably guessed, there's a bit of a time skip from the prologue. More on that will be revealed in time! Two and a half characters have been introduced by this point; Emmett, our poor potential protagonist, and then the lovely savior "Ani" and her fearsome partner, Ranger.
> 
> Ani is probably one of my favorites to write and was originally the protagonist of the novel itself. She later became just as important as Emmett, but no longer the one from whose eyes we see things from. She was, however, the first of the characters to be created thanks to Max Brooks' "World War Z" novel and one very specific story in there that just sparked this whole thing off.
> 
> Until next time, thank you for reading and any comments/questions are more than welcome!


	3. Friends, Fire, Failure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emmett meets someone he really doesn't like and the feeling is mutual. Also finds out that his idea of normal vs Ani's own is quite different and just does not handle it well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some further warnings for sexist language and subject matter in this chapter.

Any hope he had of getting out quickly tanked. He hadn’t been bitten, not to his knowledge, and he didn’t _think_ he’d been scratched, he’d totally have gone all zombie and dead by now, right?

...right?

“ I’m not infected, I swear!” The words fell out in a shrill, babbling mess before he could help himself. Twisting around, carefully, he didn’t want the goddamn dog ripping his throat out before he had a chance to plead his case, he looked up to see a dark haired, deeply tan skinned woman staring down at him with cold brown eyes. 

A machete, pitted and well used, was held in a relaxed grip in one hand resting against her side. The way she held herself, the way she _looked_ at him like he was one of those _things_ in the pit gave him everything he ever needed to know about her. She was a tight ass bitch; one of those militant femnazi types, he could totally tell. The kind of bitch who always had to be in control and thought anything with a dick was out to ruin her in some way and undermine whatever authority she thought she had.

And God help them all if she was on the rag; the next Hitler in the making right there.

His chances of survival had just tanked even farther than they’d been before she’d shown up. She’d probably just feed him to the dog out of spite anyways, or throw him into the pit to be eaten alive while she laughed and planned on getting off on it later that night.

“They all say that, kid.” Condescendingly spoken, he watched her tap the blade against a thickly clad knee- were those guards for roller derby on her knees, arms, and elbows? He couldn’t tell, they were under the sorta-baggy camo fatigues, but he thought he heard the telltale _thunk-thunk_ of something solid against plastic. 

“What’s your proof? That hand of yours looks bit to shit.”

Cold as ice, and just as frigid too, he thought bitterly at her words, her callous, heartless words. Did she _not_ have any people skills? Or did she think that a goddamn zombie apocalypse meant people should lose whatever sense of human decency they had left and should live like animals; only the strong survive and the weak, literally, get eaten.

“If I _did_ get bit, I’d have turned into one of those fucking things by now. Do I look like a zombie to you?” He snapped, glaring at the new intruder. Maybe he should tell her to go fuck off, he’d rather deal with the dog and the other girl- Annie, he thought he’d heard her name coming out of the hostile bitch’s mouth.

One eyebrow, divided as it was in three different places by scars that lanced down across her eye, nose, and cheek- like she’d gotten clawed by some sort of beast and barely managed to avoid having her eye taken out as a result, rose up ever so slightly at his defensive, antagonizing tone.

“You look like shit,” she replied conversationally, as if they were merely discussing the pleasantries of the weather, and other asinine subjects people made small talk over. “but that still doesn’t answer my question; what’d you do to your hand, kid?”

“ My name’s Emmett, you could at least tell me your fucking name before assuming you’re older than me.” Emmett shot back, temper rising to the surface.

He’d had absolutely fucking enough of this shit.

First, he’d been separated from what remained of his family and the people they’d been traveling with. Then, he’d lost any sign or trail they might have left for him to follow. After that, he’d accidentally fallen damn near into the gaping maw of one of those fucking freaks and had to run the fuck away. Which, by the way, had kicked off some bullshit three or four day run away from the direction he’d been heading in anyway to get away from the horde, only to be chased by _another_ one that’d wound up throwing him directly into the face of the wall of a Quarantined Zone. Finally, he’d wrecked his shit climbing that goddamn jagged, awful wall, got down the other side without breaking his neck, and had walked, _again_ , right into the midst of some goddamn zombie feeding orgy before he’d gotten caught in that net like some stupid bird in a trap.

His capacity for bullshit had long since passed the “acceptable” levels, and was going straight into nuclear meltdown territory.

“That’s Babs, she’s my friend, and my big sister.” Ani supplied helpfully, sensing the growing tension between the two and choosing to try and diffuse it. “She’s also the boss, so we gotta listen to what she says, except if Mama tells us something, ‘cause Mama’s the _real_ boss even if she doesn’t think she is, huh, Babs?”

She turned to the warrior woman, beaming at her like she worshiped the ground the other, shorter, woman walked on.

Personally, Emmett thought it was bullshit. There was _no way_ those two were anywhere close to related, he doubted they were even related by marriage. No way. And what kind of name was Babs anyways? Who’d she think she was, that Looney Tunes character from Space Jam who was total bullshit?

Except the stern bitchy face seemed to soften, just a little, and there might have even been a smile on those admittedly full lips. “That’s right. Where’d you pick ‘im up, Ani?”

Aquamarine-blue eyes glinted a bit as she sent him an impish smile that made his heart do a funny little flutter in his chest. “In the net, I caught ‘im in the trap.”

“ Babs” gave him an odd look. “In the net trap? The one over the pit?”

He reluctantly nodded, _not_ his finest hour. But it was the entirely _too_ giggle-filled “Yup!” the curly haired brunette gave in response that _really_ hurt.

The machete warrior’s lips twitched a little, as if fighting off the urge to grin, or give in and start laughing, as the young man figured she would be more inclined to doing.

“Catch anything with ‘im?” She asked, still keeping her voice as casual as could be.

He hated her just a little more for that.

Ani shook her head, looking oddly disappointed as she walked over to the pit. Ranger accompanied her with a glowering, pointed look in Emmett’s direction before he walked away. “Nope, just the usuals.”

Babs gave him a searching look before she too, headed over to stare at the contents in the hole. “Looks like it, that’s still a decent chunk though, how long’d it take?”

Ani gave a wiggle of her hand in a so-so motion. “About twenty, maybe thirty minutes, I think? The sun moved a little bit, and the shadows got longer, that’s all I know. I’da come out faster, but there were a few that were super slow that had to go in first.”

One hand stripped the other of the black leather glove, the bare one reaching out to ruffle the head full of dusty brown-blonde curls affectionately. “‘Atta girl, Ani, you remembered. We’ll have to tell Mama ‘bout this.”

If the smile he’d seen before had been amazing, the one she gave “Babs-the-Bitch” was nothing short of breathtaking. 

A pang of sullen, aching jealousy kicked in with a vengeance, and he shrank a little on his pile of black garbage bags. 

_You only_ just _met her today, it’s not like it’s realistic for her to fall in love with you right off the bat. Just give it time, you can probably teach her more than this bitch ever did about surviving the zombies._ The thought gave him comfort, made him relax a little.

“ So, back to the question; what’d you do to your hand?” Babs’ voice destroyed the pleasant places his fantasies were taking him, bringing him back to a crueler, uglier reality that he wished would just go away like some horrific nightmare.

Emmett’s shoulders hunched up and over his ears, a sullen, sour look on his face. “Climbed the wall.” He finally spat out, looking annoyed. He didn’t want to get thrown into the pit. 

“And what’s this about the ‘usuals’? You act like it’s _normal_ for those things to be around!”

Ani and Babs exchanged long, knowing looks. 

“Well, yeah,” Ani piped up, looking at him like he was kind of crazy. “they’ve been here for a long, long time, you know. I was eleven when they attacked, and now I’m seventeen.”

His heart nearly stopped right there. Part of him, the very small part, rejoiced at the confirmation she was around his age and thus totally not off limits.

But… if it was _normal_ for them for six years, at least anyway, how long had?

_When_ had she?

... _why_ was she here?

Emmett rose up, slowly, carefully, making sure the dog didn’t charge him. “Wait, you’re telling me you’ve been here since the Wall was put up?” Disbelieving, he couldn’t make himself accept that as the truth. The only way that could be possible would be because her parents, or mother really, stupid sexist bullshit there, had been infected and had been way too greedy and heartless to allow the father to take his children away to a safer place.

Oh god, maybe the reason she _was_ so sweet and innocent was because she’d had to watch her mother turn into one of those freaks and had only barely gotten away, or had seen her mother killed just in the nick of time to keep her from dying.

Ani and Babs exchanged _another_ of those mysterious looks between themselves before those gorgeous, angel eyes landed on him again. 

“Uh-huh,” she nodded in addition to the noncommittal sound of confirmation. “and before it was there too.” An afterthought, really, by the tone it was spoken in.

“ But,  _ why _ ? Why didn’t you escape when there was still a chance?” Not that it mattered, the freaks were everywhere now, but still she might have had a significantly better life had she just been able to get away from the prison-like atmosphere that this hell hole must have felt like.

Ani gave him a shrug, looking uncomfortable even as she sneaked a look over at Babs. 

The black haired woman shook her head, a silent warning against sharing too much with him. The action pissed him off, and before he could say anything, the two women removed a tiny box of matches from a pocket he hadn’t seen.

“Umm, can’t talk about it. Sorry, Mama and Babs have to say it’s okay first.” 

She removed a match afterward, turning around to face the open faced pit and peered down in there. “D’ya think it’ll work this time?”

“ They chased ‘im from the west, right?”

Ani nodded, Emmett too before he realized what he was doing.

Babs nodded too, looking grimly satisfied as she peered down in there and jerked her head back. “That ain’t all just rot we smell then, they were rolling around in oil, or gasoline, or _something_ that’ll end up being flammable. Rubbing and grinding all over each other, their clothin’ll have so much on it, they’ll burn.”

Wait, they’ll  _ what _ ?

The two women struck matches, the faintest whiff of sulfur drifting back to him on the wind as they lit the end of an oily rag from a second storage pouch on their hips- so well blended with their outfits he’d thought it was just bulky, too big clothing. 

“Remember what I taught you?” Babs asked, patiently even as the lick of flame crawled up, greedily eating the soaked, greasy rag.

Ani nodded solemnly, bowed her head, and spoke. “Uh-huh. From earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. Amen.”

Much to his surprise, Babs’ free hand had reached up to something around her neck, her head bowed as well, lips repeating the same words silently until the final one. 

“Amen,” she echoed, and threw her own burning rag nearly simultaneously with Ani’s own. 

A thin curl of smoke suddenly gave off a _whump_ sound, turning blacker, oilier, and thicker than it had been. Something stank of charred meat, burning hair, and hot stone mixed with some chemical smell he couldn’t really identify as they backed away from the suddenly glowing pit.

“ Wait, what the hell? What did you just do?” Emmett asked, shakily, eyes unable to tear themselves away from the faintly flickering glow, the twisting shadows writhing against what he could see from his position.

Ani gave him a kind smile as she walked over, completely unaffected and stood next to him. “We put them out of their misery, so that way they don’t feel pain anymore. They’re going home to see Jesus and everybody else they miss too.”

It was such a disturbingly simple statement that he jerked away, backing up so he wasn’t anywhere close to her. 

Was that… was that _normal_ for her? She wasn’t _bothered_ by any of that? Of just setting a whole pit of what had once been living, breathing human beings on _fire_?

“What the fuck? Seriously, you think that’s okay? You think that’s actually _normal_?” His voice was rising, going back to a shrill, hysterical quality he didn’t want to have, but couldn’t help. This was too much, _way_ too much for him to handle. He’d come looking for help, for survivors, someone that would be able to help him figure out where the safe places were.

“Do you seriously think that’s acceptable? I mean,  _ really _ ? Did you all go and lose your fucking-”

Something connected hard enough to bring stars and lights exploding in front of his face, cutting off the words that might have come out next. As his vision went black, the only thing Emmett realized he could see, aside from the new Hell pit full of writhing, burning bodies, was Ani’s startled, hurt expression, and the grim, annoyed one of Babs as something roughly caught the back of his neck and hauled back.

He saw, and heard, nothing more after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alas, poor Emmett, no one knew him prior to know whether or not he was this much of a hostile ass. Ahh well, will he get better? Worse? Time will tell! Lot of fun stuff yet to come, including, of course, more zombies!


	4. Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emmett asks the wrong questions to the right people and starts to understand there is a Secret that he's being left out of here in the Quarantine Zone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every chapter hereafter is going to have a warning for crude racist and sexist language and stereotypes being used by a specific character. The author does not condone such language or behavior and had to actually Google a list of awful terms to use.

In the twenty one years he’d lived, he’d sneaked into his dad’s beer stash all of once on a dare from some buddies.

_ He’d been cool, cocky, and absolutely sure nothing would have happened as he’d cracked the top and guzzled the first two swallows without trying to taste the hops. _

“ _ Good shit, man, I’m tellin’ you, you don’t know what you’re missing out on.” He’d bragged to Ryan, laughing as he sipped at the remnants in the aluminum can. “I could take a whole six pack or two of this shit, and not feel a damn thing. Captain’s gotta be a weak ass little pussy to let two or three beers go to his head.” _

_ The phone had been pulled out of his hands in an instant, disconnected and tossed on to the kitchen table. His father had given him a look, balding head scarlet with rage, and it was in that moment Emmett had sworn he was about to get the ass kicking Darnell’d told him about getting from his old man. _

_ But nothing had happened, and the red in his face had gone down, little by little as they stared at one another. _

“ _ So,” his father had said, calmly, too quietly as he fixed the specs up the bridge his nose. “you said you could handle a six pack or two?” _

“ _ Dad, I-” _

“ _ Answer the question, son.” _

_ Miserable, heart making his stomach churn and sour with the beer in it. “Yeah, I did.”  _

_ What was his old man going to do about it? Tell him to throw it up? Ground him? They’d never stick the punishment for long, letting him off after like two, maybe three days at worst. His mom was easily convinced. _

_ He didn’t recognize the look on his father’s face, the grey peppering his mustache and the crescent that remained of his hair around the back and sides. He nodded once to himself, as if confirming whatever punishment decided on. _

_ Emmett braced himself for the worst. _

“ _ Well then,” his father walked out of the dining room. _

_ He stared, jaw slackening, as the older man came back in with the other five cans he’d left behind, a six under the other arm as he set them down, one by one, on the table beside the cell phone. The chair scraped against the faux tile on the dining room floor, his father easing himself into it- his back no longer what it used to be after that fall off the ladder- and sighed, cracking the seal on the extra he’d brought with him. He gestured with the glass bottle to the seat opposite of him.  _

_ “Have a seat.” _

“ _ Dad, I-” _

_ “Have a seat, Emmett.” _

_ The quiet tone was like the crack of a whip, and hurt a hell of a lot more than he imagined one would. Uncomfortably, he perched himself on the edge of his seat, and waited, feeling like he was an eight year old kid stuffed in a fifteen year old’s body.  _

_ Silence stretched between them for the longest time, sweat beading up on his brow as he waited for his father to say something,  _ anything _ , that would end that torturous, disappointment filled quiet. _

“ _ Let’s see it.” _

“ _ Huh? _

_ His father gestured to the remainder of the can on the table, set there by suddenly nerveless fingers by his son. “You said you could handle an entire six pack on your own. So, let’s see it.” _

_ His heart thundered in his chest. “Dad, I-” _

“ _ Nope, you told your buddies it was no big deal. A man’s only as good as his word, so let’s see it.” _

_ And he’d done it. Every. Miserable. Last. Can. _

_ The puking hadn’t stopped, he’d thought he was dying beneath his father’s cold, heartless gaze with that funny little half smile on his whiskered mouth. Every moan, sobbed plea for forgiveness had been met with those same, same terrible words. _

“ _ Keep going, just a few more.” _

_ \-- _

“ Keep going, just a few more.”

Emmett’s eyes shot open, and immediately slammed closed as a light brighter than the flames of Hell itself blinded him. His father’s words parroted in an eerie, disoriented manner by someone who certainly _wasn’t_ his father.

Silence.

“ Oh, you unholy, cheating  _ spi- _ ”  The unfamiliar voice stated, deep, rumbling, sounded like thunder and and violence.

Someone responded, whatsherface, Babs. “Finish the word and the knife splits your tongue in half.”

Holy shit.

“ All the better to eat your pussy with,  _ bruja _ .” Came the retaliation, full of the kind of grin that he’d heard many a time from some of the boys towards the women they liked to get fired up.

Holy shit _and_ goddamn; whoever that guy was, he had balls of steel to talk to that crazy bitch like that after the threat she’d hit him with. Emmett held his breath, pretending not to be awake so he could figure out just what the hell was going on, and where the hell he might have been dragged off to.

“ What’s a pussy, and why would you wanna eat one, CraMo?” Ani’s voice chimed in, entirely too full of curiosity for her own good.

Emmett choked, made a wheezing sound that might have been a restrained laugh even as he groaned and lifted his hands to clutch his aching face and skull. Pain throbbed behind his eyes and bounced a steel ball around his skull. Someone had to have clocked him with a baseball bat, or a truck. Probably a truck, _definitely_ felt like a truck from where he was lying.

“ Oh look, the little bitch is up.”

He was saved from having to respond to that by Ani’s helpful statement. “I don’t think he’s so little, even you had a hard time carrying him, Cra.”

...he didn’t know whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing. Was she calling him fat? And what the hell kind of a name was “Cray”, anyway?

Movement from the other side of the room. “I”ll go get Doc, tell ‘im Sleeping Beauty woke up without a kiss from any princes out there.”

Stung, Emmett forced himself to sit up despite the throb of agony jaggedly stabbing him everywhere above the neck. 

“Fuck you too,” he managed, hoarsely, offering a shaky middle finger in the retreating shadow’s direction.

“ Ooo, I saw that!” A sing song voice that might have been cute in any other moment other than the one where he had the demon of all headaches. “Hey Emmett, what’d Cra mean by ‘all the better to ea- mmph?”

Through the blurring and doubling of his vision, he watched Babs neatly slip her up to cover the girl’s mouth. “It means CraMo’s gonna get the soap from Mama, that’s what that means.”

A long pause, and she slipped her hand off the girl’s mouth. Ani rubbed at the place her skin’d been touched, wandering away to something off to the side. Water ran. 

Wait, running water? How was that possible?

“Your hands were sticky,” Ani complained, wiping her mouth and face off, voice muffled as she bubbled through the water she splashed on and rubbed herself dry with the towel. “and okay, what part was bad enough that he’s getting the soap? I don’t wanna bite the soap too. Mama _always_ gets it in good.”

Emmett had the strangest urge to yell, ‘that’s what she said!’, but figured out that any kind of yelling would end up with him falling off whatever he was lying on in agony on the floor. Instead, he listened to Babs patiently explain that she was not to use the word 'pussy' under any circumstances, especially not when combined with eating. Ani seemed to get it, though she did state she didn't understand why it was bad, but if it was enough to get the soap, she'd avoid it in the future.

God, she was cute. A little childish at times, but definitely cute. Maybe she was just air headed.

“ So, you’re awake.” A man’s voice came in, low enough it didn’t set off any painful throbbing in his ears the way the others’ voices had, and he squinted pathetically up to the dark skinned man in a coat that was, while stained, remarkably  _ un _ shredded.  He looked around his thirties, maybe as young as his late twenties, and had the kind of stress lines and sunken spots in front of his eyes as his father’d had when he was pulling sixty or seventy hour work weeks. 

“How do you feel?”

Doc.  ... _ Doctor _ , now he understood the nickname by the other guy’d called him. 

“Like shit,” he answered truthfully, relieved that someone sane was around and could probably fill him in on what’s going on. “I don’t know what happened, but my head hurts like hell.”

“ Mm,” Doc nodded, shining a penlight in the other’s eye, checking his pupils, two gloved fingers rested against the inside of his wrist. He kept eyes on the watch on his wrist. Silence reigned supreme for a time. “Pulse is normal, not thready, pupils not blown and no sign of a fever.”

He clicked the light off, replacing it in the coat pocket and studied the boy’s grimy face. “So. Feeling any chills, nauseated, or any spasms in that hand of yours?”

Emmett frowned, trying to figure out what he was trying to get at. “I feel a little sick,” he said cautiously. “but I haven’t eaten anything other than a handful of old vending machine leftovers and had a thing of water I lost along the way, so I’m probably hungry.”

“ And the hand?” Back to that shit again.

“Throbbing, a little, but it feels like the time I ran a nail through it as a kid, so…” He trailed off at the look on the doctor’s face, the nod he gave and turned to where Ani and Babs had been remarkably silent.  Awkward, because the looks they had on their faces were… pensive, at best, grim more like it when he looked a little closer at Babs herself.  _What gives?_ _They were just laughing like two minutes ago._

Doc nodded, running a hand over the shaved expanse of his scalp and sighed. He nodded lightly, as if in time to music, before looking to the girls. “Nope, it’ll take time for the blood work to come back, but I don’t believe he is.”

Didn’t believe? “Don’t believe I’m what? Infected? I told you, it’s not a bite. I gashed it up climbing the barricade.”

Ani looked to Doc, then to Babs. “Does this mean he’s not like us?”

“ That’s right, he’s norm.” Babs told her.

“ Oh.” There was an awful lot of disappointment in that one word. She knelt down and rubbed Ranger’s ears, the fucking mongrel looking at him with some sense of secretive superiority.

He really wanted to kick that monster mutt.

“ Norm? You mean, normal? Yeah, I told you that.”  The hulking figure that suddenly popped in without so much as a word of warning had him jerking back, head thudding painfully against the bottom of the lower bunk with a yelp of pain and a series of curses that had Ani giggling like a schoolgirl.

Eyes watering, he managed to get a good idea of who this new guy was who settled in, gigantic hands shoved into his fatigue’s pockets. 

Ruddy skin, thick muscles, white-blond hair and dark eyes of some sort-- couldn't tell if they were blue or brown or even _black_ at that distance and lighting. He was tall as shit too, probably way over six feet tall, and looked like he was torn between sneering at the rest of the world like it was beneath him, and waiting to take the next fucker who look at him sideways apart.

Given the way the guy was looking at him? Probably the latter. Great. The dude who looked like a young Duke Nukem was getting ready to posture and make an example out of him like the macho motherfucker he thought he was.

“ So?” He asked, looking directly at Doc. "What's the diagnosis?"

Doc shrugged, giving him a, ‘what did you expect?’ kind of look. “All clear from here, you know the drill. I’mma let Mama know what’s goin’ on, what’s she up to, Cra?”

Great, even the doctor was calling him by that crazy ass nickname. What the hell was with these people? Did they _not_ have actual names or something?

"He's a problem we gotta solve. Gotcha." “ Cray” looked over in his direction, gave a snort of derision and shook his head once, as if making some sort of snap judgement about him that Emmett knew was gonna piss him off later on down the road. Looked back to Doc with a half smile, half smirk.

“Gettin’ shit ready for dinner. Looks like she’s pullin’ out the stops since none of these fuckers’re goin’ out tonight.”

Doc didn’t even bat an eye at the insults, or the language for that matter. “None on duty tonight?”

“ Nope,” Babs joined in the conversation. “Ani and I smoked the sinkhole over on Oak and Grand, they’re sending a clean up crew to prep it for the next round.”

“ Anyone we know in there?” Interest in his voice as he finished packing up his tools.

Babs shook her head. “ Not a damn one, stragglers dead a while though, guessing ‘round two, maybe two and a half years.”

Emmett stared, surprised. How the fuck would she know that? ...was she talking about how long dead they were, or how long it’d been since they’d been seen by anyone around? For that matter, there was a way to tell how long dead someone was?

“ How’d they look?” Doc asked, tone flat.

Equally flat response. “Like they turned a week ago.”

“ _ Damn it _ .” One hand ran up and over the stubbled scalp again, coming to rest at the base of his neck in agitation, lips pressed into a thin line. “You know what that means?”

Ani, surprisingly, was the one who piped up after that question, exchanging a brief look with Cra, who only gave her a nod of confirmation. “They’re not rotting fast no more.”

“ _Any_ more,” Doc corrected her absently. “but yeah, you’re right Ani. Good observation. They _should_ be rotting quicker, what with the unusually hot, dry spring going into summer we’ve been havin’. Shit ain’t right, I don’t say that lightly either.”

“So bring it up at the next meeting of the bitches with sticks up their dicks. watch ‘em cry, bitch each other out, and turn around to fucking bitch _us_ out for slacking off while they beat their meat and feel important while the rest of us risk our fuckin’ asses to keep theirs from being chewed.” Cra replied tonelessly, bored with the conversation already, though there was a glitter in his eye that made Emmett nervous.

This guy didn’t like whoever was in charge, and his words implied he’d rather _let_ those people get eaten and turned. Probably for the sheer joy of killing them afterwards. He caught Emmett’s eye and gave him a smirk that more than implied he _knew_ what the kid was thinking and didn’t give a rat’s ass about what he thought anyway. "Got somethin' to say, shithead?"  


“ What’s not rotting, the zombies or something else?” Emmett asked, shifting uncomfortably where he sat. “And where the hell are we, anyway?”

“ At my house,” Ani told him, proudly with a sweeping gesture of one arm. “we stay here a lot and sleep and stuff. I’ll show you around later, okay?”

This was her  _ house _ ? He looked around, blinking as his eyes tried to peer into the dim shadows surrounding the rest of the room. Whole lot of clutter, not a whole lot of things he could discern that made much sense. There were a couple of windows, covered at present, of course, that let in light, and a thick, heavy looking door that looked like it would lead to the outside via pair of stone-and-wood steps. “What part of the house are we in?”

“ Basement. Unfinished when she showed it to us, but we finished it about two-three years ago.” Babs supplied helpfully as Ani bolted up the stairs, presumably to go talk to whoever “Mama” was supposed to be and let her know everything was okay. Her eyes narrowed as CraMo gave a slight jerk of his head in the new guy’s direction after meeting her eyes.

She glared at him as the two of them seemed to have an entire argument consisting of body language, a stare down, and eyebrow movements. Emmett watched the entire time, completely fascinated by the silent encounter, and felt his jaw drop as, somehow, the  _guy_ won over the femnazi.

The blond turned heel and stuffed his hands in his pockets, casually looking back over his shoulder and whistled to Doc. “Yo, Doc, gonna go make sure the little retard doesn’t rat me out, you comin’ now that we know shitstain here ain’t infected?”

“ I have a name, asswipe.” Emmett shot back, tired of being referred to with any number of derogatory names and insults.

CraMo waved his comment off dismissively, didn't even bother to turn back and look at him. “I’m sure you do, kid, so do the rest of us, and nobody gives a shit who we are.”

“ That’s enough, ‘mo, he ain’t ready for your brand of crazy yet, give ‘im a day before you really start with your warm and fuzzies.” Doc chided, disinfecting the instruments in the stainless steel sink. Took a clean cloth and wiped them down before storing them away in the cupboard for later. 

“For that matter, quit callin’ her a retard, you know that pisses me off, upsets her, and ain’t a damn bit true in your own words." He pointed a just cleaned scalpel at the man's retreating back.

CraMo just laughed in that irritatingly condescending manner of his and kept walking.

Doc did, however, turn to Babs, the lone woman in the room and gave her an uneasy nod. “Hate to leave it to you, but…”

The smile that came across Babs’ face might have been better suited on a fucking shark, or piranha, Emmett thought edgily as the short, muscular woman headed for him, clapping Doc on the shoulder on her way past. “Don’t worry ‘bout it, I got this. Save me some of the good stuff before the bullet sponge wannabe over there decides to eat it all like the fatass he is.”

Emmett couldn’t personally see _where_ the fuck any inch of fat was on that man’s body, but then again, it didn’t surprise him that she’d probably slept with the guy and probably knew every inch of him like a third rate hooker.

“Hey, if we needed pork and beans, I'd just grab and  roast your Mexican ass over a fire. Be a bit fatty for my taste but you know what they say, a moment on the lips--”

"and my fist between your lips." Doc stated icily, having crossed the room and planted one fine fingered hand between the bulky man's shoulders and  _shoved_ as though he were nothing more than an overly stubborn child. "I told you that's enough and I mean it."

Holy  _ shit _ .

"It's okay, Doc," Babs supplied solemnly. Three heads turned to stare at her.

Her lips twitched into a smile filled with humor. "I'll call Ave later."

"The  _fuck_ you'll call that whore into this house!" CraMo yelled, turning to come back down the stairs.

"Say you're sorry." She countered.

"Suck my dick." He retorted.

Doc grabbed CraMo's ear and dragged him up the stairs. "I"ll leave this to you, Babs."

They heard a shove, a grunt, and a muttered, "Move that ass or I'll move it for you."

Wait, what?

“ You seriously let him say shit like that to you?” Emmett asked, incredulous as he followed her movement. There was a glitter in her eyes, odd and uncomfortable to see, as she moved just outside of the light’s range. Made him feel like he was being interrogated or some shit. 

Or stalked; predator hunting prey.

“ I’ll break his neck later and use Ave against him,” she replied dismissively, waving it off as if it were nothing. Pure, simply routine, that was what it came across as. “but that’s a topic for later. You said your name was Emmett?”

_ Finally _ .

“ Yeah, name’s Emmett. Your name’s not really Babs, is it?” He asked, feeling sort of rude for asking but didn’t figure she’d mind if she let that big motherfucker talk to her like that.

“It is now.” Her voice had gone oddly cool, a note of finality to it, as if there would _be_ no further discussion on the subject. “Got a couple of rules for you, Emmett, you got two choices; you shut up, and listen up- ‘cause I’ll only say ‘em once- or you can have one meal, one night’s rest, and we’ll escort you the fuck on out of our district and find you somewhere else to go. We clear?”

He stared at her, disbelieving. Did she really just issue him an ultimatum?

“That’s what I thought, now listen up.” She was pacing a line in front of him. “First rule? You _listen_ to what we tell you; be it me, Ani, CraMo, Doc, or Mama; one of us gives an order? You _jump and do it_ , we’ve been at this for years now, we know our shit, know how to do it right, and what _needs_ to be done in damn near every single situation that’ll ever come up.”

Been at  _what_ for years? This whole zombie thing? Sure, it'd been like... ten years or so or something since the Quarantine Zones had been put up, and the outbreaks had been pretty small and contained after that. Stragglers here and there but nothing  _huge._ Not like... not like what happened a few years ago.

She turned, paced the other direction now. “Second rule; _don’t fucking ask questions when we tell you to do something_. Unless CraMo tells you to go kill yourself in any manner of colorful ways, because fuck that guy’s sense of humor. There are reasons we do shit a certain way, and _not_ going along with it means you’re dead, dyin’, or worse.”

Great, what’d he say earlier? Fuckin’ goddamn control freak.

“ Third and most important rule,”

Oh _this_ oughta be good.

“ Everyone on patrol is your brother or sister; you don’t fuck ‘em, hit on ‘em, or otherwise do anything sexual with them.”

Wait.  _ What _ ?

“ What the fuck? Why the hell is that rule in pla-”

His head rocked backwards and smashed into the wall hard enough he saw stars a second time, but didn’t quite go out the way he had the last time. He swore, viciously and violently as he opened his eyes to stare directly into a pair of diamond-hard black-brown eyes that had enough killing intent in them to down a goddamn grizzly.

“I want you to pay _really_ close fucking attention to rule three, _Emmett_ , ‘cause if _anyone_ here finds out that you so much as lay a non-platonic hand on Ani, you’ll be staked out and left for the dead to find and feast on your sorry goddamn ass before you can say your name twice.” 

She rammed him against the wall again. “Understand?”

He groaned, shook his head the best he could and mustered up whatever non-pain ravaged bits of his ego was left to respond. “She’s a big girl, she can make her own goddamn decisions, quit being such a jealous bitch just ‘cause I might be more her ty-”

How he managed to get on the floor was beyond him, he only knew he was against the wall, on the bed at one point, and suddenly he was halfway across the floor, the bitch on his chest straddling him, and a knife about the size of his forearm against his throat hard enough if he swallowed wrong, he’d open his own throat up.

He didn’t know if that impressed him or terrified him more to know she was _that_ goddamn fast and _that_ goddamn good with a knife.

“Since you wanna do it the hard way, we’ll cut the bullshit,” Babs hissed out. “Ani is off limits, not just to me, not just to CraMo or Doc if they were even _into_ women, but to _everyone_.”

“ Why?” He croaked defiantly. If they were gonna cockblock him, they'd better have some goddamn good reason for it. 

Also he completely ignored that whole 'if they were into women' comment. She was totally mistaken, had to be. CraMo was obviously into her by the way he threw insults and all but pulled her ponytail on a playground.

There was a firestorm of emotion that exploded across the woman’s face, some sort of internal struggle of what was okay to say, and what should be kept a secret from him.  Part of him felt something click into place at the look. 

He was an outsider barging in on this collective group of survivors, and they had absolutely no fucking clue whether or not he was someone who was able to be trusted, or even if he were infected or just someone who’d otherwise spread some kind of dissent among the group as a whole. They had a Good Thing going and he might just fuck it all up and ruin the dynamic by bringing new ideas and complications into the mix.

Which, okay, was still bullshit reason wise but he could kinda understand.

“She’s not normal.” Babs finally stated, not budging an inch even though her voice had lost most of the vicious edge. “She’s just a kid, get it? She has no business doin’ anything with _anybody_ until Doc gives her the all clear, Mama too, and then she _has_ to tell us first.”

And it can't be him, her expression said and her words didn't.

“ Her mother?” He croaked out again, trying not to push the knife deeper into his throat. Maybe she'd back off if he asked the right questions.

“Sorta, Mama’s _everyone’s_ mother, but she’s Doc and I’s in the official sense. Let’s go back to something more interesting though; Ani’s off-limits, and anyone who tries is either a rapist or pedophile- and I don’t have _any_ fuckin’ tolerance for that shit. Got it?” She asked again, leaning heavier on the pressure to drive the point home.

There was a gulp, the prick of a knife into flesh, a bead of blood welling up as she withdrew at the very careful, very small nod that came her way.

“What happened to the last person who tried?” He had to know. She was gorgeous, so obviously someone had tried something and that was why they were hella protective of her.

Babs paused, sliding the blade back into its hiding place on her hip as she turned, looked over her shoulder and gave him a chilling smile. 

“We took care of her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CraMo, in spite of his absolutely filthy mouth he refuses to clean up, is honestly one of my favorites to write due to what I know about him and that you all will learn about in time. Does it excuse his mouth? Not in the slightest, and as you can see, he's called out left and right about it- he's just a stubborn ass and refuses to change.
> 
> Ani's issues are not being stated out right but some of you may very well guess. Part of it is, yes, from trauma, the rest is just the way she is psychologically. She's immensely bright, but definitely needs a buddy to keep an eye on her- and not just Ranger, who is still plenty of protection in his own right!


End file.
